0:09Skip to 0 minutes and 9 secondsPROFESSOR BRUCE SCATES: We're standing outside the exhibition buildings in Melbourne. This magnificent dome structure was built to host the International Exhibition of 1880, an exhibition that showcased the technological, the commercial, the cultural achievements of its time. Victoria's motto was peace and prosperity, and this building, it exudes the confidence, the optimism, the elegance of the Victorian Age. Whoever would have thought that just a generation later, the Empire, Australia, indeed, all the great nations represented here in 1880, would be wrought asunder by war? We called it the Great War. It would tear Europe apart, and it would claim countless thousands of lives.

0:54Skip to 0 minutes and 54 secondsIndeed, a child born when this great dome reached up into the sky had a very, very good chance of dying far, far from home on the distant battlefields of Gallipoli, Belgium, Palestine, and France. In the science celebrated here, the technological advances that had promised to improve the lives of millions, would lay the world to waste. The First World War was the world's first industrialised war, and it was fought with terrifying new weapons of mass destruction.

1:27Skip to 1 minute and 27 secondsAlongside the exhibition buildings stands Museum Victoria, and to mark the centenary of the Great War, the museum's hosting an exhibition all of its own. The curators have called it 'Love and Sorrow', and they hope to convey the cost, the unfathomable human cost of the Great War. We've decided to begin our history of the First World War here, because the objects featured in this remarkable exhibition speak to us across the ages. They help us to imagine what now lies beyond living memory. They embody the experience of the men and the women who suffered that catastrophe 100 years ago. This is a re-creation of Glencorse Wood in Belgium. The landscape represented here was shattered to pieces by high explosives.

2:20Skip to 2 minutes and 20 secondsThis tiny patch of ground alone claimed thousands of lives-- Australian lives, British lives, German lives. All the bodies of those men are mingling now in the cold dark earth of Flanders. And what we see in this landscape is a landscape that's being reborn, because when visitors walk across through this space, their own form is embedded in this landscape, and the woods somehow come to life again. And what that's telling us is that the Great War somehow still affects us all. In the next five weeks, we'll walk through woods like this one. We'll take you on a journey across the killing fields of Europe.

3:01Skip to 3 minutes and 1 secondWe'll speak to the historians that have made these landscapes their life's work, and we'll discuss the testimony, the voices from the past that can still whisper through these woods, and make this imagine place somehow real. In week one of the 100 Stories-- that's this week-- we'll be examining grief and mourning. And really, this honour roll is a perfect place to begin. It records the name of some 90 men, most of them clerical workers from a stock and station agent here in Melbourne. That business would have employed what? A few hundred people? Around 1 in 5 volunteered for overseas service, and 12 of these 90 men never came home.

3:45Skip to 3 minutes and 45 secondsREBECCA WHEATLEY: Fenley McDonald was killed in Australia's first major action of the Great War, the landing at Gallipoli in April, 1915. George Hummerston was killed nearly three years later to the day in the desperate battles to turn back the German offensive in 1918. Both were young men in their twenties, and both left grieving families behind. They never recovered Fenley's body, and names carved in wood and stone became surrogate graves. Names mattered in the 1920s, and they matter still today, because behind each name lies a story, stories that we can now recover through archives available online.

4:25Skip to 4 minutes and 25 secondsLAURA JAMES: An honour roll is an official and very public kind of memorial, but families also had private places where they could grieve. Often, they centred around a photograph on the mantelpiece, a shred of uniform, or a letter written from overseas, and read, and reread time and time again. Recovering the private face of grief is our second task for this week, and sometimes these memorials were incredibly fragile like this baby's bootie sent to daddy, Frank, from a daughter that he would never live to see.

4:58Skip to 4 minutes and 58 secondsPROFESSOR BRUCE SCATES: In week two, we'll look more closely at how women mobilised for war. And again, we'll divide that topic into two separate but related themes.

5:08Skip to 5 minutes and 8 secondsREBECCA WHEATLEY: To begin, we'll look at women's unpaid war work-- the writing of letters, knitting of socks, the emotional labour that connected women with their menfolk far away on battlefields overseas. And we'll look at women's actual war service-- the nurses who confronted the physical and the psychological trauma of war.

5:26Skip to 5 minutes and 26 secondsLAURA JAMES: It wasn't all trauma, of course. For the women who wore this uniform, nursing was also a great adventure. a chance to see the world. And she recorded her experiences on a camera like this one. In week two, we'll explore that woman's view of war and try and share it with you.

5:43Skip to 5 minutes and 43 secondsPROFESSOR BRUCE SCATES: Week three is devoted to what we call the other ANZAC-- Indigenous servicemen whose experience of war has long been ignored in Australia, and the Chinese, the Russian, the Greek, the non-British soldiers who formed an integral and too often forgotten part of the expeditionary forces that were sent from Australia and Aotearoa and New Zealand.

6:06Skip to 6 minutes and 6 secondsREBECCA WHEATLEY: Week four is entitled War Wounds, and we'll look at the plight of the blind, the crippled, and the faceless, the whispering men who died as a result of their gas poisoning, and the cot cases-- men who were confined for as long as 40 years in beds like this one.

6:21Skip to 6 minutes and 21 secondsLAURA JAMES: Modern artillery not only mauled mens' faces-- it affected their minds too. The second part of War Wounds looks at shell-shock, looking at the psychological as well as the physical damage wrought by war.

6:36Skip to 6 minutes and 36 secondsPROFESSOR BRUCE SCATES: And in the final week of the MOOC, we're going to look at how the war divided our society, both during and after the fighting, because Australia and the world were never going to be the same again.

6:48Skip to 6 minutes and 48 secondsREBECCA WHEATLEY: The Old Lie looks at the conscription debates, the anti-war movements, and the way the war created a less tolerant and less inclusive society.

6:57Skip to 6 minutes and 57 secondsLAURA JAMES: A Land Fit for Heroes considers the country that these men came home to, examining the plight of soldiers settlers sent out to farm often marginal land.

7:07Skip to 7 minutes and 7 secondsPROFESSOR BRUCE SCATES: Every week, we'll provide you with readings, discussion topics, and the chance to debate the big questions raised by the 100 Stories project.

7:17Skip to 7 minutes and 17 secondsLAURA JAMES: Each week, we'll guide you through the archival sources, introducing the digital narratives that will enable you, anywhere in the world, to explore the lives behind the stories.

7:27Skip to 7 minutes and 27 secondsPROFESSOR BRUCE SCATES: At the end of this course, we'll return here to Museum Victoria. We'll talk to the curators and the conservatives who worked hand in hand with historians to assemble these objects, to tell their stories, and to create this truly compelling exhibition.